Top 10 Monuments To Black Americans

Martin Luther King isn’t the first African American to be immortalized with his own monument. There are several memorials across the country paying tribute to African American leaders, artists, and academics.

Check out our list of the Top 10 monuments to African Americans. We positioned them in the order we think

6. Crispus Attucks — Boston, MA

In the Boston Commons’, a monument commemorates the events of March 5, 1770, when British soldiers, later to be successfully defended by John Adams, shot down five Bostonians. Crispus Attucks is the best known of these five. He is widely hailed as a hero of the American Revolution, although little information about him can be verified. According to some reports, Attucks was of African and Native American descent and had fled to Boston after escaping his enslavers. Attucks’ grave is located in the nearby Granary Burying Ground.

At the column’s base, a bronze plaque illustrates the infamous event. Its two central figures are sculpted in high relief, meaning that parts of the figures are three-dimensional and jut out significantly from the background. You may notice that one figure’s hand is shinier than the surrounding bronze. It has been polished by visitors reaching out to touch it.

5. George Washington Carver — Newton County, MO

A life-size bronze of George Washington Carver by acclaimed African-American sculptor Tina Allen of California stands inside the Missouri Botanical Gardens. The six-foot statue shows a mature Carver of about 65 years old, wearing a lab jacket and a wise, gentle expression as he stands holding a small plant to the sunlight.

4. Joe Louis — Detroit, MI

Joe Louis Barrow, aka “The Brown Bomber” is one of the all-time great boxers. The 24 x 24 x 11.5 feet Monument to Joe Louis was commissioned by Time Inc. for the City of Detroit to honor Joe Louis. It was created by sculptor Robert Graham and installed at Jefferson Avenue at Woodward, Detroit on October 16, 1986.

3. Adam Clayton Powell — Harlem, NY

This figure of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who represented Harlem in Congress from 1945 to 1970, strides dramatically up an incline in the forlornly windswept plaza that fronts the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building in Harlem.

The statue of Powell is 12 feet high and made of bronze. It sits on a cylindrical pedestal made of stainless steel and black granite. All told, the monument is 21 feet tall. In his right hand, Powell has a copy of the Congressional Record; one could be forgiven for assuming that Powell was looking for a place to chuck that thing. Powell is depicted, like I said, moving uphill, no doubt a bit of symbolism that could serve for any black person so memorialized in New York — or for anyone who endeavors to get such a memorial built.

The piece was sculpted by Branly Cadet, a New York native. It’s named “Higher Ground.”

1. Martin Luther King Memorial — Washington, D.C.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial is located in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., southwest of the National Mall. The Memorial is located at the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin near the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, on a sightline linking the Lincoln Memorial to the northwest and the Jefferson Memorial to the southeast. The official address of the monument, 1964 Independence Avenue, S.W., commemorates of the year that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.